Melinda Doolittle
My Funny Valentine

This chick is on American Idol. I tune into American Idol sometimes because I love music…….and I gotta tell you, when I saw her sing My Funny Valentine the other night I was wowed. The chick’s got some pipes!

Uh huh…… ok. Now when’s Kiley gonna go???????

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday said the secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, resigned after reports troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan were receiving substandard medical treatment at the Army’s top hospital.

Harvey’s resignation came a day after the head of the Walter Reed Medical Center was fired.

“I am disappointed that some in the Army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation pertaining to outpatient care at Walter Reed,” Gates said. “Some have shown too much defensiveness and have not shown enough focus on digging into and addressing the problems.”

Gates said a new permanent head of the medical center would be announced today. That comes as the Bush administration faces questions over a decision to put Army surgeon-general Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, a former commander of Walter Reed, in temporary charge of at the hospital.

Source: Reuters

This embargo is so stupid. China is a communist country, but that’s ok. We do business with so many BAD people…… what is it about Cuba?? I bet they’d lift that embargo if we could get OUR hands on that oil!!

The discovery of oil in the Florida Straits and near the Cuban shoreline — potentially billions of barrels of reserves — has boosted Cuba’s energy prospects and drawn the attention of the U.S. oil industry.

Now, a small Canadian energy company, Sherritt International, says it plans to export Cuban oil for the first time — a move that could put the crude on a collision course with the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Details are few, but questions about the move go to the heart of the embargo: Where will the oil be refined? And how could Sherritt International or subsequent handlers keep the Cuban crude out of fuel being exported to the United States?

The issues rise as the oil and gas industry turns its gaze to the prospect of oil drilling off Cuba — currently forbidden fruit for U.S. companies.

Sherritt International, in a report about its record 2006 earnings, said that in 2007 it “plans to export a portion of its Cuban production as a consequence of anticipated production growth and limited demand for domestic heavy oil.”

Sherritt, which had revenue of about $1 billion U.S. in 2006, produces an estimated 68,000 barrels of crude oil in Cuba. Michael Minnes, company spokesman, said plans for exporting the oil are still under discussion.

”We respect U.S. law,” Minnes said from Sherritt’s Toronto headquarters. “We have no intention of selling it into a situation that would affect the embargo.”

Read more at the Miami Herald

Comedians, artists and certainly political cartoonists tend to possess an anti-authoritarian, skeptical, irreverent streak. This makes the staunchly conservative cartoonist an especially odd bird.

Which cartoonists dare to criticize their own party? Who seems to literally illustrate GOP talking points? Who are their favorite targets? Who mocks liberals - and who seems to truly hate them? Who’s funny? Who’s independently minded and who’s a hack? Read, and decide, for yourself!

Rightwing Cartoon Watch #15 covers a two-week period, from 2/12/07 to 2/25/07. Hot topics include Bush’s troop escalation (the so-called “surge”) and the field of presidential candidates on the Democratic - and Republican! - sides. Plus, for how many issues can a cartoonist still work in an Anna Nicole reference?
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HICKS CHARGED AFTER 5 YEARS AT GUANTANAMO

LOSING THEIR BUZZ

IRAQI POLICE MISSING, QAEDA CLAIMS KIDNAPPING

EXPERTS: UGANDA SHOULD BE U.S. PRIORITY

A SUDDENLY CONVENIENT TRUTH

MAN QUESTIONED ABOUT BUSH YARD ARTWORK

CIA BLUNDER PROMPTED KOREAN NUCLEAR RACE

ARE U.S. OIL COMPANIES GOING TO “WIN” THE IRAQ WAR?

PRESIDENT OF IRAN TO VISIT SAUDI ARABIA FOR SUMMIT

CHILD SOLDIERS IN THE DRUG WAR

PRODI WINS IN LOWER HOUSE

CHENEY BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

IF YOU HATED IT the first time, you might like the sequel better.

Remember Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the right-wing goon squad whose defamatory insinuations helped sink John Kerry’s presidential campaign? They’re back! This afternoon, key Swift boaters George “Bud” Day, Mary Jane McManus and Carlton Sherwood are holding a little reunion, in the guise of a panel discussion at the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference. The panel topic? “The Left’s Repeated Campaign Against the American Soldier.”

It’s not hard to visualize the right-wing talking points that will emerge from this. The Swift boaters will be dusting off their 2004 scripts and reaching back still further to dredge up their Vietnam-era notes. Expect to see all the old myths revived: The antiwar left spits on returning troops and gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Oh, John Murtha, why do you hate our brave troops?

The reemergence of the Swifties is depressing, but not because they’re likely to do much damage to progressive candidates in the next election cycle. “Swift Boat II: The Sequel” will have a different ending from “Swift Boat I” because Americans just aren’t that dumb.

Polls show the American public - and the troops themselves - to be deeply critical of the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq and concerned about the war’s devastating effect on the American military. We’ve watched the situation in Iraq go from bad to worse, from worse to worst and then from worst to unthinkably awful, as “insecurity” morphed into “sectarian violence,” then into chaos and civil war.

Read more at the LATimes

The new caution among US intelligence officials reflects adherence to what some now call “the Powell Rule.”

For more than three years, American intelligence officials have insisted that they learned from their mistakes in the months leading to the Iraq war, when murky information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs was presented as fact and inconclusive judgments were hardened into statements of near certainty.

The more calibrated intelligence assessments that have come to light in recent weeks, particularly on Iran and North Korea, appear to show a new willingness by American spy agencies to concede the limits of their knowledge.

The new caution reflects adherence to what some officials now call “the Powell Rule.” That rule is intended to avoid a repetition of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s humiliation after the satellite photos and intercepted communications he presented to the United Nations Security Council as proof that Iraq was stockpiling banned weapons turned out to be nothing of the sort.

Read more at Spiegel

No surprise here…….this was the plan all along, no?

Under Iraq’s pending oil law, as much as two-thirds of Iraq’s known reserves would be developed by multinationals, amounting to mass theft from the Iraqi people. Tools

The U.S.-backed Iraqi cabinet approved a new oil law Monday that is set to give foreign companies the long-term contracts and safe legal framework they have been waiting for, but which has rattled labour unions and international campaigners who say oil production should remain in the hands of Iraqis.

Independent analysts and labour groups have also criticised the process of drafting the law and warned that that the bill is so skewed in favour of foreign firms that it could end up heightening political tensions in the Arab nation and spreading instability.

For example, it specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq’s known reserves would be developed by multinationals, under contracts lasting for 15 to 20 years.

This policy would represent a u-turn for Iraq’s oil industry, which has been in the public sector for more than three decades, and would break from normal practice in the Middle East.

According to local labour leaders, transferring ownership to the foreign companies would give a further pretext to continue the U.S. occupation on the grounds that those companies will need protection.

Union leaders have complained that they, along with other civil society groups, were left out of the drafting process despite U.S. claims it has created a functioning democracy in Iraq.

Read more here

Isn’t it kinda early in the year for such severe weather?

ENTERPRISE, Ala. - A system of powerful storms packing tornadoes passed from Alabama into southwest Georgia, hitting a hospital and causing at least nine deaths statewide, a state official said early Friday. The burst of tornadoes was part of a larger line of thunderstorms and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast.
In Georgia Thursday night, the storm caused six deaths in Baker County, according to a fire chief there, said Buzz Weiss of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. -AP

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